Image by Genesis / Ed Banger Records / Because Music
French electro-house duo Justice have quickly taken their spot within the French Touch pantheon alongside the likes of Daft Punk and Cassius. So when it was announced that one half of the duo, Gaspard Augé, would be releasing his debut solo album, naturally curiosity peaked. Would his solo material operate in the same hardcore machine funk universe of tracks such as Genesis, or would it present an entirely new side to the artist all together? Our first taste of the project, Force Majuere, arrived in April and seemed to signal towards the latter while still carrying the familiar scent of Justice in the vein of 2016’s Women. That track would go on to become the song of choice for the BBC’s coverage of the Euro 2020 tournament, a particularly major escapade that even Augé may not have anticipated. By the time the second single Hey! came galloping in on horseback a month later, it was clear that while Augé would be using the same aesthetic palette as his work for Justice, he would be doing so very much on his own terms. Hey! and its accompanying music video was at once distinct from similar work by Justice, due mostly to its farcical absurdity. The Western espionage of the chorus’s string section and the loopy, psychedelic tempo shift at the three minute mark would reveal Escapades as something significantly less serious than the rockstar gasconade of Justice.
Indeed, across its twelve storming tracks Escapades is a bizarre, rollicking ride through Augé’s weird side and may very well be the most ludicrously entertaining electronic music release of the year. There’s an eccentric corniness to the music that recalls the slapstick absurdism of an SNL skit, making it easy to not take anything on here too seriously. Most of the tracks glow with some sort of microwaved 80’s and 70’s nostalgia, and Augé intentionally leaps into these tropes to produce the sort of camp, B-movie quality that flows through Escapades. In most cases, these devices are used to intriguing narrative effect. Each song feels distinctly characteristic, caricatures of situations, emotions, energy and places. The Transylvanian jaunt of Vox recalls a lovelorn vampire roaming the streets of 80’s Paris, and the lonely cowboy noir of Europa smells like whiskey on brown leather.
Unsurprisingly, Augé finds his sound rooted firmly in European origins with lashings of Italo disco melodrama as told by Giorgio Moroder and baroque pop hooks in the mode of ABBA. Sonically, it’s Justice but less Blade Runner and more TRON, embracing a kind of sci-fi geekiness that lends the album a boyish charm and exuberance, like a choose your own adventure novel or the 8-bit video games that appear to have informed some of Augé’s choices. Pentacle is cosmic goofiness at it’s best, with a climatic synth aria that grows in scale as the track pushes forth on its cyber-comic quest towards greatness. Belladone may be the least outright camp of the bunch, but even then its Flashdance keyboard hook and slick bass chords plant it firmly in Augé’s retro-chic midnight movie on acid.
This may be Augé’s greatest parlour trick across the album; establishing a distinct sonic identity and sticking to it. And it’s a trick that is essential for these tracks to work. As suggested by its name and the audacious album art, the scale of Escapades is huge. There is a lot going on at any given moment. These are massive sounds at their most unrestrained, made to explode in epic fashion like dynamite in the desert. This lends a distinctly cinematic quality to the music, which often reaches for the highest highs of ridiculous maximalism. That said, its theatrics are particularly well handled. Escapades never goes completely off the rails, and Augé sticks to his aesthetic formula. This makes for a uniformly tidy experience which in turn, allows us to lose ourselves in the fun of Augé’s raucous adventures.
Escapades is released via Genesis / Ed Banger Records / Because Music and is available to download here. See the music video for Force Majeure below.
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